[plug] reinstalling the linux boot

[Jason Smith]

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On Sunday 16 March 2003 12:49 pm, Dene Staples wrote:
> Any ideas on how to get a GRUB bootable floppy disk? I suppose I'll
> download Grub and find out that way?

If you can read that grub partition like you said, then you're in luck!  A 
functional GRUB boot disk can be made by concatenating the stage1 and 
stage2 files on your GRUB partition.

So if you copy those files to e.g. c:\temp, I think you can still do this 
(well, you could with MS DOS 6.22):

  copy /b c:\temp\stage1 + c:\temp\stage2 c:\temp\image.flp

Then you can go get rawrite.exe or such and write that floppy image to a 
disk.

Alternatively, you could use tomsrtbt to mount that partition, then just 
"cat stage1 stage2 > /dev/fd0"

Boot off that disk.  Now you have to tell grub where your kernel is, and 
you also have to tell that kernel how to boot the system.

If you don't know it, you can figure out your boot partition using grub 
documentation on the web.  Also, determine the path to your kernel, 
relative to this partition (maybe named bzImage-something or 
vmlinux-something?).  Tell grub where your kernel is, and what arguments 
to pass it.  One argument you'll surely need is the root device:

  kernel (hd0,1)/bzImage root=/dev/hda2

Then boot the kernel.

  boot

Hopefully, your system will come up.  Last, re-install GRUB on your MBR.  
Run grub.  Tell it where it can find your boot partition (from above, 
probably) and to install the boot data on your hard drive.

  root (hd0,1)
  setup (hd0)

(You can read all about it with "info grub")

Then you'll want to go and edit /boot/grub/menu.lst to add Windows to the 
boot menu, lest you get the opposite problem that you have now.

Isn't dual-booting fun?

P.S. About dealing with grub in this fashion, you may find the Gentoo 
installation instructions slightly helpful.

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